Boloslav and the Town of Lincoln

Rushford, Pierce, Royal Creek and Boloslav/Boloslaw are four of the Kewaunee County communities that have truly faded into oblivion. Not even a 45 mph sign remains to prompt one to question its presence. As the name of a township, Pierce is at least familiar. Rushford was larger than today’s Frog Station, and Frog Station is known world-wide. Rushford, Royal Creek and Pierce were 1850s  postal communities so while they receive next to no mention in Kewaunee County histories, the Department of Post Office knows they were there in a day before the U.S. Cartography Office required official maps of the locations. It is the site documents that pinpoint them.



Boloslav is curious. It seems to have been in existence for just a short time, never had a post office and it really wasn’t a crossroads’ community. George Weidner put up ice, but there was no saloon, hall, church, cheese factory, blacksmith, school or store identified as Boloslav. Depending on the year, the closest store and cheese factory were in Gregorville at either Wenzel Zlab’s or Fett's, and that’s where the post office was. Boloslav included the vicinity called Gregorville today, however it is was really the neighborhood to the north,  made up primarily of Bohemians with such names as Wochos, Tlachac, Blatsky, Gregor and Holub.

Wikepedia says Boloslaw is a name of Slavic origin meaning “great glory.” Both Poland and Bohemia had multiple kings named Boloslaw, or a close derivative. Surprisingly there was even a 12th century  Swedish king with the name.  Thirty-one miles northeast of Prague in the central part of the Czech Republic is the city of Mlada Boleslav. According to Wikepedia, the city was an important Jewish center during the 17^th and 18^th centuries. By the 19^th century the city was prospering, and since the 1990s it has been one of the Czech Republic’s richest.

There is little doubt that some immigrants to Kewaunee County came from the Boloslav region and, as so many others, named their community for their place of origin. What is unusual is that references to the place in Kewaunee County appear in newspapers about the time of World War l. Questioning the locality because of a reference to the place is what brought on the search. During the years before and after World War l, residents of the area were included in Fett’s Corners or Gregorville, names for the same place. Why was part of the area so briefly known as Boleslav? Historian George Wing mentioned it in one of his writings, but as far as can be determined, he mentioned the place just once.

During the Great War years, Bohemian Rudolph Dobry was an auto salesman covering the Algoma territory for the A. Schultz Garage. That was at a time when William Meisler had the Luxemburg area, John Drossart worked the Casco territory and Frank Riha brought in customers around Tisch Mills. Dobry’s Algoma territory included calling on the Boloslav farmers, and Dobry took orders in the prosperous community. He sold autos to some who were basking in road conditions in February 1918 when they were able to take their new autos out for a spin. Even though a number of its men were soldiers in Europe fighting in a war remembered as World War l, the year seemed to be a good one as nobody complained when assessor Michael Meunier made his rounds in May. By December the farmers were feeling good as they were “getting a neat little sum of money per bushel” from the clover threshing months earlier.

 

Algoma veterinarian Dr. V.J. Laurent usually serviced the Boloslav area farms a few times each week. John  Zlatnik hired such men as Eli DeBauche, Frank Holub and Desire Vandermause to haul wood to Algoma. Vandermause worked with Theodore Holsbach and Art Herison hauling John Laurent’s logs to Rio Creek. Both communities offered farmers plenty of sales' opportunities. Though not nearly the size of Algoma Veneer & Seating Co. or Plumbers Woodwork, the papers often mentioned the large number of farmers taking their wood-lot products to Rio Creek where Builder's Woodwork was a thriving industry that still operated its cheese box division.

Euren’s Dr. Kerscher  visited in the area though his office was only two miles west. Adolph Holub and his family lived in Swamp Creek - an area also known as Silver Creek - frequently going the few miles to his parents’ home in Boloslav. The Casco and Brussels’ telephone companies put up lines in the area, offering connections with the outside world, though service was not always a given as weather affected the lines. Winter weather also affected mail, which by November 30, 1904 meant Rural Free Delivery (below right) was in effect throughout Kewaunee County. Autos were on the road during the summer, although horses ensured far better travel in spring when roads were often too wet and muddy, and in the winter. Summer meant farmers were crushing stone to be laid on the roads in front of their properties. It was a time when farmers still saw to the roads adjacent to their farms.



Papers discussed Wisconsin cheese inspectors at the area plants* a few months before the Boloslav schools** were closed in the fall of 1918 because of Spanish flu. Mrs. Leonard Blatsky was one of the sick adults at the time. School had been closed in April as well, but that was because the teacher was called to the military. Teachers were called for duty straight from the classrooms, although local resident Henry Vandermause was teaching in Duvall where he finished the term.  A few months later, in June, a large number of children were back in school, this time for weighing and measuring by orders from the county’s Women's Defense Council. Township ladies, who had also been appointed as lieutenants for the Council of Defense, were kept busy canvassing women for the Third Liberty Loan.

What came to be called World War l affected the small Bohemian neighborhood as it did every other. Nobody wanted to see men sent to war and most of those who were had a send-off party with all the neighbors in attendance. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Gregor feted son Louis in July 1918. A month later Joe Alberts, son of Rio Creek blacksmith Joseph Alberts,  was honored before he left for his stint in the Army.

From http://www.history.navy.mil/

Gregor was a seaman aboard the U.S.S. Carola when he wrote to his parents from Brest, France on the day after Thanksgiving 1918. Gregor told about Thanksgiving, a day like any other because he had the duty. Gregor got to feast that day and told his family that in addition to the turkey, pumpkin pie, cigars and cigarettes, he indulged on so much that he could not name. He told his folks about the Carola, the admiral’s flag ship, which was really a rich man’s yacht that was turned over to the government for the war effort. He said Brest was the largest naval base in France, having 48 destroyers, and that headquarters was once Napoleon’s chateau. It was quite a sight for a young man from rural Kewaunee County! The letter must have been Gregor’s first since he left because he described the trip across the Atlantic and the German sub their destroyer forced down with heavy firing, though it was a nearby tanker that actually sunk it. Far worse was the Spanish flu that hit the convoy. Gregor was part of the detail responsible for removing bodies aboard ship. Thirty-four had died and 250 were sick. He felt men died just about as soon as they got sick. Gregor mused that he stayed healthy being around so many who were so sick.

Gregor and Frank Vandermause came home in July 1919. Vandermause had  married Emma Blatsky, who lived in his neighborhood, in January 1918, before he entered service. Gregor married his sweetheart Hattie Groth of Alaska  after he came home, in October 1919, about the same time that Boloslav faded from the Town of Lincoln.

Where did Boloslav come from so suddenly and why did it disappear so fast? It is possible the Bohemian residents of the Town of Lincoln area united in a show of solidarity. Today it would be so tritely called “making a statement” or “sending a message.”

To comprehend it all would mean a study of European history. Briefly, Bohemia was a province in the Habsburg’s Austrian Empire. It was bounded by Austria on the south, German provinces Bavaria on the west, Saxony and Lusatia on the north, and by Moravia - now the eastern part of the Czech Republic - on the east. The Habsburgs mandated German as the official language in schools and in 1848 the Czech people revolted with so many others in Europe. When the war began, the European Bohemians saw the Germans and Hungarians as enemies and did not want to serve in those armies fighting their fellow Slavs.

The end of the war brought Czechoslovakia and independence. Inclusion of the German populated Sudetenland was a thorny issue that became even greater in 1938. But, that’s another story.

Boloslaw was a Town of Lincoln Bohemian community that came and went nearly 100 years ago. It was made up of fine, upstanding people who left little to tell its story.

*Cheese factories were probably those at Euren, Gregorville, Swamp Creek and Kodan.**Boloslav schools seemed to include Gregor, Liberty and Lafayette, and possibly Silver Creek. A. Schultz' garage stood on the southwest corner of 3rd and Steele, built as Sam Perry's store and now Richmond Center.

Sources: Newspapers, maps, Wikipedia. Photos are from the 1912 Plat Book, blogger's family collection & the 1914 postcard is from the blogger's postcard collection. The rural mail carrier is the blogger's grandfather's and most likely came from Algoma Record Herald.